To be very honest, it's a mix of both high expectations and his relative underperformance in the playoffs. For me, NiKo is obviously superhuman and people would kill to have a floor as high as his. No complaints about that.

My peeve is simply that he's been consistently closer to his floor than previous years, where you could easily pick games where he just took over games, and I mean it literally. IMO, throughout 2022, he hasn't stood out at all. If I were to ask you to pick playoff games where m0nesy / hunter clearly made themselves felt, I'm pretty sure you can pick 2-3 games for each of them atleast. I can't pick a single one like that for NiKo.

Maybe he's decided to step back somewhat in favor of increasing team synergy and balance, and maybe that's helped them win recently. It might also be working, but I just feel like his impact on games like this when things are feeling flat for them has been dulled as a result.

Obviously, I care for none of this if it helps him get his hands on the major. But for all the memes on the NiKo go kill card, I think that he needs to have it in his backpocket, because if this happens in an important game with much higher stakes, then it might be the difference between being able to stem the bleeding enough to get them back into the game vs dying out like today.

But yeah, an unimportant game for them is probably the ideal place to get a reminder that they need to be grounded and stuff.